Blood Will Have Blood
by Cryptic Nymph
Summary: Mycroft pays a visit to a certain journalist. Post Reichenbach, Dark!Mycroft I think .


**A/N: I wrote another oneshot because I'n silly and lazy and having trouble with my WIPs. It's only short, and I was having a few Mycroft feels that I needed to get out after rewatching The Reichenbach Fall. Spoilers for Series 2, obviously. I don't know if this qualifies as Dark!Mycroft, but he's certainly not in the best frame of mind during this. Thanks!**

* * *

"I need to talk to you, Kitty Riley."

The house was bare. Pictures had been taken from the walls, which themselves had been stripped of wallpaper, and all her furniture had been removed. All that remained was one of her lamps, sat on the newly exposed floorboards near the window, and a single wooden chair in the centre of the room. In that seat sat a man, straight backed in his finely made suit, seemingly transfixed by the silver pocket watch he had clasped in his hand.

"Who are you?"

He gave a small titter, as if amused by her question. "Not an advantageous line of enquiry." His voice was deep but cold.

"What have you done with all my things?" she asked, more of her anxiety audible in her voice now.

"I have _disposed_ of them." He got up out of his seat, and finally turned to look at her. He had reddish brown hair, receding somewhat and enhancing his high forehead, neatly parted and kept in place. Everything about the man seemed precious, fastidious and controlled. He wasn't quite good looking, but he wasn't ugly either, more like a shade of grey between the two. His features were sharp, and somewhat familiar, though she could not place him. Kitty opened her mouth to speak, but to say what she was not sure.

"I'll call the police," she eventually stuttered.

The man smiled back without mirth. "No you won't. Come on, you know better than that." He walked closer, and seemed to tower above her. "It'd take you at best 10 seconds to call 999 and tell them your address, and then there's the issue of waiting for them to arrive. Think what I could do in that time."

She stared silently at the man, unable to think of a way out.

"I would like you to sit down now, if that's alright." It was less of a request than a demand. Slowly, she walked across to the chair and sat in it. She was now too far from the door to make a run for it.

"In answer to your earlier question," he said briskly, "my name is Mycroft. And your name is Kitty Riley, I believe. Or at least, I _hope_ your name is Kitty Riley, else this meeting will have been somewhat redundant and terribly rude upon my part."

"That's my name, yes."

He gave her a nasty smile. "Ah, good. You write for The Sun, yes?"

"Yes," she said, hotly. She did not like his tone as he had spoken the name of the paper. "I suspect you're not an avid Sun reader yourself."

He smirked coldly at her. "I read all the papers. I have to. Even the gutter press."

She felt a pang of anger, but was more preoccupied with how cold Mycroft's stare was. It was if this man were made of stone, of ice… "So what are you then? Some sort of civil servant?"

"You could say that." Mycroft ran a hand through his hair, displacing it a little.

Kitty smiled. "You look the type."

He shot her a hate-filled stare before continuing, startling her a little. "That's something you journalists are supposed to be good at, isn't it? _Reading_ people…"

"A necessary requirement of the job," she replied flatly.

"Oh, I can imagine."

She paused, feeling a little more confident. "Can I ask you to cut to the chase? Not that I'm not loving the small talk, but I'd rather like to know where all my stuff's gone."

"You've been noticed," he said, in a matter of fact tone. "By the public. By the people I represent. By me. Especially by me."

Kitty felt pride wash over her. "You mean the Sherlock article?"

He twitched at the name. "Yes. You wrote a piece, outing Mr. Holmes as a fraud."

She frowned at him. "You needn't look so disgusted. I realize journalism isn't the most popular of professions, but news is news. The public needed to know."

"Is that really all it was about?" Mycroft's voice was filled with quiet anger. "Or was it more about your injured pride? More about the fact that Sherlock Holmes stood in the way of your _career trajectory_?"

She smirked. "What does it matter? He was guilty. A fake. The suicide just proves it."

"A man _died_, Ms Riley, " he spat. "An _innocent_ man, at that."

"How the hell would you know?" she sneered. "Why would you even care?"

He moved very suddenly towards her, leaning close to her face. "I'm an interested party," he half snarled, his cold mask slipping momentarily, "and I am so, _so _much cleverer than you. You think you can read people?" He glanced down at her, sweeping his gaze from the bottom of her shoe to the top of her head. "I know everything about you, everything that you are and were and will be because I am a _genius_."

Kitty sat frozen in her spot, all her bravado vanishing at the sight of the white hot rage emanating from Mycroft.

He straightened up again, seemingly regaining his composure. "I am one of the most intelligent men in the entire country, and yet I made a mistake. I let a man- Richard Brook, as you insisted on calling him- trick me into giving him the key to the world, or my world, at least."

"I don't understand."

"Of course _you _don't," he sneered contemptuously. "You believed him too, except you're too stupid to realize what a danger he was. In a land of locked rooms, the man with the key is king, and James Moriarty knew that. You let him be the storyteller. You gave him a voice, a voice that would be listened to because everyone believes what it says in the paper." He stared at her with disgust in his eyes. "Myths and lies and fairy tales, that's all it was, except no one knows who the real villain was thanks to you. An innocent man's reputation dragged through the mud for the sake of your career."

"Do you have evidence?" she asked, wanting to seem defiant but sounding more desperate. "How do you know Richard Brook was a fake?"

He smiled. "I'm going to let you in on a little secret. You know what I said before about the man with the key?" She nodded. "Well," he continued, "I own what's behind the doors. All of them. I see everything. Know everything. Control everything. You think you're a threat to me? Guess again. I could imprison you where no-one could ever find you. I could have you killed in a thousand different ways, each more painful and drawn out than the last. I could make the entire world believe that you're something you're not, drag your name through the mud, just like you did to Sherlock. Half the world's afraid of what I could do to them, and the other half relies on my protection. All except one madman with an obsession with Sherlock Holmes, who knew how to destroy him."

Kitty shook, in spite of herself. "How did you do this?" she mumbled.

"This? This was easy. There's no trace of you having lived here, I've made sure of it. There are no records of you at all, in fact. Kitty Riley never existed. Kitty Riley was never even born, never a faceless hack who printed words that destroyed lives."

"Y-You _can't_... You can't just make people _disappear_!"

"I can, I have, and most importantly, in your case, I really, _really_ want to. You craved recognition? Well, now no one will ever know your name."

There was silence. Long, deafening silence.

"What am I supposed to do?" she managed eventually, finally succumbing to tears.

He looked more dangerous than he ever had before, colder and more detached than she had previously seen him. Again he moved close to her and leaned near to her face. "You need to solve the final problem," his words were slow, delicate and exquisitely painful. "One last problem. You need to stay alive. I'm not saying it'll be easy. I'm not saying you'll enjoy it. You won't be able to work. You won't be able to travel. Officially, you've never existed. But if you want to cling to life so much, then you can manage it, I'm sure. And know always that I will be watching. Know the true meaning of a witch hunt."

Kitty breathed heavily between her sobs, too afraid to look away from Mycroft's steely, dangerous gaze.

"Oh, and one last piece of advice," he said with a smile. "_Run_."


End file.
